Monday, October 13, 2008

CIPA - Children's Internet Protection Act

There have been a good handful of you that have visited and commented on my postings for this blog. Thanks! Your comments have allowed me to continue my research and post new findings. At this point, there have been five of you who have taken the survey located to the right of this blog dealing with CIPA. If you are reading this and you have not yet taken the poll, please do so now as this posting will focus on information from that survey.

CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act)
Background
The CIPA is one of several bills that the U.S. Congress has proposed in order to limit adolescent's exposure to explicit content available online on school and library computers. Senator John McCain was responsible for introducting the bill that would later become CIPA to the U.S. Senate in 1999. President Bill Clinton is credited for signing the bill into law on December 21, 2000 and it was upheald by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 23, 2003.

CIPA in a Nutshell
CIPA requires schools that recieve federal funding from either the E-Rate program or Title III, to enforce Internet safety policies with technology protection mesaures. Failure to adopt a policy that implements a protecetion measure on technology could cause a school to lose federal funds. District are free to select filtering or blocking programs, however, there are no specifics about whose access must be filtered and what types of material must be blocked/filtered by schools receiving federal funding.

In addition, the ALA decided to challenge CIPA in 2001. Wikipedia does a good job of explanining why ALA believed that the law was unconstitutional. The following information is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children. Please visit this site and read the section on the suit that challenged the law and respond to the questions at the end of this post.

For more informatoin regarding CIPA visit the following websites:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/CDA/Cipa.htm
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cipa.html
http://ifea.net/cipa.html
http://www.universalservice.org/sl/applicants/step10/cipa.aspx
http://cipa.neric.org/
http://www.llrx.com/features/cipa.htm

Please respond to the following:

1. Do you believe CIPA is necessary in school settings?

2. Should schools filter online content or should students have unlimited access to the Internet?

3. Does CIPA violate the mission of libraries?

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Ellison V. AOL

Please use the following link to read about an Internet case regarding copyright.
http://www.benedict.com/Digital/Internet/Ellison/Ellison.aspx

After reading, please respond to the following questions...

1-What are your thoughts about copyright violation as it relates to this case?

2-The court was for and against both parties. Do you think one party had a stronger case? Why or why not?

3-Why do you think that Ellison was willing to settle "on terms that remain confidential?"

4-What does this case teach us about legal issues relating to the Internet?

Abandonment of Copyright

Erica asked a great question regarding information found on my post entitled "World Wide Web." She wanted to know how to determine whether copyright is abandoned for Internet materials. The best answer that I can find based on my research thus far consists of the following:

How long does copyright last?
-Works created on or after Jan 1978, life of author + 70
-Work for hire 95 years

Basically you will need to do extensive research to find out the status of the copyright. The following two web sites may be helpful in determining the status of copyright for a specific piece of work.

http://www.librarycopyright.net/digitalslider/
This website will help determine the status of a copyright.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ23.html#location
This website will help with the status of things registered before 1978.

Chapter 9 - Internet in Schools


I will be basing the information for this post from Carol Simpson's Copyright for Schools. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, please feel free to read Chapter 9.

What guidelines affect Internet?
This section of the chapter was particularly interesting to me. Throughout my research I found that copyright and how it relates to the Internet categorized as an issue that is unresolved. I kept asking myself, "Well, how can it be unresolved? Either there are guidelines that exist or they don't exist." Chapter 9 of Simpson's text provides the best answer regarding this issue.

"Unlike print works, music, audiovisuals, multimedia, computer software, and distance learning, there are no set copyright guidelines for the Internet. Partly because the Internet is composed of print, music, audiovisuals, multimedia, and computer software, none of the established guidelines fit perfectly, but ALL of the established guidelines may apply to some extent." (Simpson, 2005, p. 124)

With this in mind, the text suggests that one must always revert back to the four standard tests of fair use to figure out whether or not information taken from the Internet is fair. In addition, every creator of materials available on the Internet have five rights: reproduction, distribution, adaptation, public performance, and public display. In other words, this would include any scanned photos, e-mails, written documents, recording of voice on a digital file, etc. Simply put, notice of copyright is not required in order to have such types of items protected under copyright.

Special considerations for different Internet services
Perhaps the most surprising bit of information that I have learned thus far was found in regard to E-mail.

"The author of an e-mail message owns the content of that message. You, as the recipient, may not make copies of that message, or distribute it without the consent of the original author. This impacts messages you may forward to third parties without the express consent of the original author." (Simpson, 2005, 126)

Think about all the e-mails that are forwarded to administrators, guidance counselors, other teachers, or to parents/guardians in educational environments. Express your thoughts here regarding the issue of "fair use" and e-mail.


Source:
Simpson, C. (2005). Copyright for schools: A practical guide. Worthington, OH: Linworth Publishing.